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9781594164354

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"""Crytzer's nuanced narrative moves swiftly and surely over people, places, and events that might otherwise threaten to overwhelm the story of the Whiskey Rebellion. With the practiced eye of an experienced writer and historian, he introduces individuals with enough background and color to fix them in a reader's mind without burying us in details that might distract. For those interested in visiting the area, he includes helpful location information about key places and buildings--some of which remain--where events took place. A healthy number of illustrations help flesh out the story. The Whiskey Rebellion is a must read for anyone who wants to understand frontier history and the ever-present potential for escalating resistance to the immoderate use of federal authority.""--Emerging Revolutionary War Era ""On Christmas Day 1794, an estimated 20,000 citizens lined the streets of Philadelphia to gawp and jeer as a score of bedraggled and shivering prisoners shuffled past under military escort. In the depths of winter, these wretched ""rebels"" had been marched 300 grueling miles across Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to answer charges of treason against the United States. Their trials marked the culmination of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion, an armed defiance of federal authority that presented George Washington's presidency with its gravest domestic challenge. President Washington had taken the threat so seriously that he authorized an army of 13,000 militia and, wearing his old blue and buff uniform from the Revolutionary War, personally led one of its wings toward the epicenter of unrest along the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. As Brady J. Crytzer notes in ""The Whiskey Rebellion,"" his vivid account of what contemporaries called ""the Western Insurrection,"" this was a region with which Washington was familiar from his younger days fighting alongside the British during the French and Indian War. Indeed, one reason for Washington's decision to take the field as commander in chief (the only sitting president ever to do so) was the threatening muster of 6,000 rebels at Braddock's Field, near Pittsburgh, the site of a bloody defeat in 1755 from which, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he had been lucky to escape alive. . . . Crytzer grounds his engaging narrative upon intimate knowledge of the landscape where events unfolded, identifying locations linked with the insurgents and the troops sent against them.""--Wall Street Journal ""Crytzer's fast-paced narrative of the Whiskey Rebellion elicits sympathy for nearly everyone involved--even the men in the middle, who sought the favor both of their frontier neighbors and elite politicians in Philadelphia. Some of these moderates took jobs as tax collectors. Others found themselves leading the insurgents. With this focus, Crytzer offers abundant fresh insight into what was arguably the greatest crisis of George Washington's presidency.""--Woody Holton, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution ""By tracing the history of the 'Whiskey Rebellion' through descriptions of existing sites and buildings, Crytzer gives us a layered view of our landscape and also of the ongoing, evolving, and very American contention between federal and populist power.""--Daniel Bullen, author of Daniel Shays's Honorable Rebellion: An American Story"

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Brady J. Crytzer teaches history at Robert Morris University. He is the recipient of the Donald S. Kelly and Donna J. McKee Awards for outstanding scholarship in the discipline of history. A specialist in imperialism in North America, he is the author of a number of books, including Fort Pitt: A Frontier History, Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, War in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Kittanning Raid of 1756, and Hessians: Rebels, Mercenaries, and the War for British North America. He is also the host of Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution.

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